The following page is dedicated to our giveaway prize for one deserving entrepreneur to travel on the Geeks on a Plane (GOAP) mission to Asia.

60 entrepreneurs were initially nominated. This included 24 past presenting companies of Startup Camp Montreal 1-5, plus 36 new startups that nominated themselves for a speaking opportunity at the upcoming 6th edition.

A community cross section of 30 people, that are well connected and knowledgeable on Startups in Montreal, were given the chance to vote. They have brought the list of 60 entrepreneurs down to 5, and the shortlist is…

The shortlist of nominees include (see details on each below):

1) Marc Gingras - Tungle

2) Bruno Morency - DokDok

3) Sebastien Provencher - Praized Media

4) Evan Prodromou - StatusNet

5) Frederic Guarino - Keenkong

It is now the community's turn to vote for who they would like to see win this trip. We have asked the 5 nominees to give us a bit more background on their company, including a short video explaining why they think they should be selected, and what they would do for the community upon their return.

To be eligeable to vote you must:

2) Act in good faith. Only vote once.

3) Vote using the link sent to you by email. If you did not get an email with the link, you are not yet registered and therefore not eligible to vote. Please do register if you plan on attending Startup Camp Montreal (May 6th).

And now for a word from our nominees…

1) Tungle

Tungle Corp.’s Tungle.me makes scheduling meetings easy–across organizations, calendar systems and time zones–by eliminating the multiple emails, phone calls and double bookings that typically come with finding a time to meet. Tungle.me synchronizes with leading online calendar systems including Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Entourage for Mac, and Lotus Notes (Beta), and does not require visitors to sign in or register to schedule meetings. Tungle.me also supports scheduling meetings on-the-go with Tungle.me for iPhone, which is available for free download in the App Store.

About Marc Gingras - Founder

Marc is a serial entrepreneur with a successful track record as a venture capitalist. Prior to founding Tungle, Marc was Vice President of Business Development and Product Marketing for Nimcat Networks, a leader in peer-to-peer (P2P) communication applications, until its acquisition by Avaya Inc. in September 2005. Marc was previously a venture capitalist at Innovatech Montreal where he oversaw investments in numerous telecommunication and software companies. As a venture capitalist, Marc’s investments yielded a combined ROI of more than 125 percent. Prior to joining Innovatech, Marc co-founded Gytek Inc., an e-commerce software company in Waterloo, Canada, which he eventually sold to Entrade Inc., a NYSE company. He remained with Entrade as Chief Technology Officer. Marc also managed the launch of “Chapters.ca “, a leading Canadian portal. He continues to be actively involved in the community as an advisor for local technology companies and SOPAR, a non-profit organization working toward reducing poverty in India. He also teaches Entrepreneurship in High Technology in the University of Ottawa’s MBA program. Marc earned an MBA from INSEAD, a master’s degree in management sciences from the University of Waterloo, and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Ottawa.

2) DokDok

DokDok makes it easy and automatic for users to find, work on and share the latest version of any document - right from their inbox. We believe that users should be able to easily verify that an attachment is the most recent version, track its changes, share it with others - all without forcing a change in typical business workflow. That is, we are bringing document management controls to the email client. The first public mention of DokDok was on stage during StartupCamp Montreal 3. Since then, we've been to TechCrunch 50 2009 as a DemoPit company and launched in private beta for Gmail in January 2010.

About Bruno Morency - Founder

Bruno has been involved in startups since graduating from McGill Engineering in 2001. His first company developed a web-based knowledge management application and was bought by ISAC Technologies in 2003. Before founding DokDok in 2009, Bruno was involved in other hi-tech startups as head of marketing and product development. Since being introduced to Pine on an old UNIX terminal, Bruno has had a love-hate relationship with email. With DokDok, he embarked on a mission to make attachments a sensible way to share document. That effort made him love email even more as a user but, coincidentally, made him hate it more as a developer.

3) Praized Media

Praized Media Inc. is a complete white-label social media solution for local media companies (e.g., newspaper publishers, directory publishers, radio stations, television stations, magazines and local portals), allowing them to integrate a local search function with real-time social media. The company’s technology platform enables users to read, comment and interact with local destinations, trends and events. Users can even perform searches on these local activities within a particular community, providing them with the latest user-generated local buzz. Praized’s products are social media enablers, allowing local media companies to integrate social media components into their current mix of user features and advertiser products. They can also be used to launch new full-featured socialized local destination sites. The Praized platform generates buzz around local merchants, who would have otherwise gone unnoticed. The company’s products are designed to increase both user activity and traffic, through enabling social media, and online reach to customers, by providing direct real-time leads to interact with potential clients. Likewise, local merchants will prefer websites that utilize Praized’s technologies, because they will be communicating directly with users who are in eminent need of their product or service.

About Sebastien Provencher - Founder

Sebastien is Praized Media's intrepid explorer and ambassador. He has more than 12 years' experience in local search, interactive entertainment and online media. From 1999 to 2007, Sebastien played an instrumental role in formulating Yellow Pages Group's online strategy. He developed their most successful online advertising product ever (DirectoryPlus), struck a strategic partnership with Google, and created a vision around local search. Sebastien co-founded Praized Media (www.praizedmedia.com) in 2007 to help local media companies tap into the growing potential of online word-of-mouth and social media. He writes about traditional media, local search and social media on his blog at http://blogs.praized.com/seb and tweets at @sebprovencher. Find out more at http://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastienprovencher

4) StatusNet

The StatusNet platform enables communities, brands and organizations to incorporate social messaging into their own domain. Thousands of businesses and online communities are use StatusNet to stay connected.

About Evan Prodromou - Founder

Evan Prodromou is the founder of StatusNet and the creator of the StatusNet software. His previous experience includes creating the Open Content travel guide, Wikitravel. He serves as CEO and lead developer for StatusNet, Inc.

5) Keenkong

Keenkong helps take the stress of the real-time web for brands, NGOs and political parties. Our proprietary language analysis software takes social media conversations and makes them actionable, making easy to engage and nurture audiences.

About Frederic Guarino - Founder

I’m Frederic Guarino. I was born in France, raised in NYC and Tokyo, I’ve lived, worked and traveled in Asia, Europe, North America and now call Montreal home. Quick professional background: I started in the news photo business in NYC in the mid-90s just as that industry got rebooted by digital cameras and our agency was bought by Bill Gates. I then started an SMS applications startup in Europe in 2000 and came back with that expertise to the US. Focused on communities around me, I’ve contributed to help them grow and among other things co-organized barcampnyc3 and 4, TEDx events and have been an active supporter of co-working.

The Nomination and Selection Process

- 60 companies were nominated (24 past presenters and 36 new nominees)
- 30 of Montreal's most connected "Gurus" voted and brought the list of nominees down to 5
- April 20th an email was sent to those registered for “Startup Camp Montreal 6” (410 people) with a simple survey (5 names 1 choice).
- April 22nd at 7PM EST: Vote closes. The community will have about 48hrs. to vote.
- April 24th the winner will be announced

We would have preferred that the community vote take place at the event on May 6th, but we are compressed in time due to recently announced GOAP deadlines, China travel visas, and flights.

These are all fantastic entrepreneurs that will certainly do a great job representing Montreal. The vote is now in the hands of the community.